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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25547065">mating habits of the laysan albatross</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien'>mayerwien</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>a collection of fics where the author said fuck you to her adhd [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Birds, Birthday, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fade to Black, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, Stanley Uris &amp; Everyone - Freeform, i forgot how to tag fics it's been 84 years</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:28:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,495</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25547065</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayerwien/pseuds/mayerwien</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the months after Derry, all of them keeping in touch via their group chat and taking turns visiting one another on long weekends, Stan had to contend with a few new things. Not just the nightmares, either, or the therapy he started to help deal with them. It was Richie’s texts at all hours of the day, with the most random conversation starters—what vegetables were officially considered hipster vegetables; a list of novelty condoms he’d bought online ranked from best to worst; how someday he wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the last Blockbuster standing, somewhere in Oregon. The way Richie’s eyes shone mischievously even over Facetime, just before he opened his mouth to make a terrible joke.</p><p>What it felt like to look at someone you loved quietly once, long ago, and realize that maybe you love them now. Stan had looked at it like he was holding it in his hands, the whole tangled, wrecked, wet mess of it, and thought, <i>well, what am I supposed to do with this?</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Richie Tozier &amp; Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>a collection of fics where the author said fuck you to her adhd [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913902</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>74</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>mating habits of the laysan albatross</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I was reminded recently that it is Stan’s birthday month, so before the month was out I wanted to dash something off in celebration and, let’s be real, as a gift mainly to myself. So here’s 4,500 words of Stan being dorkily and wholeheartedly loved. Belated hbd, man. You’re alive and brave and learning how to be happy in every single one of my universes.</p><p>(also i ship stanpat and reddie as much as the next resident of clowntown, but i also have a permanent resident card in multishipping hell so adult stanrich rarepair nation let’s GO)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Before, Stan liked to think he had his life neatly sorted into boxes. Work in one box, mental notes on his investments and personal finances in another, his quiet weekend hobbies in yet another. <em>Debilitating childhood trauma</em> is very firmly packed away in a box way in the back of his mind, while <em>called-off engagement</em> is in a box that only gets reopened once a year or so, whenever Patty is in town again and asks if he wants to catch up over drinks.</p><p>The Losers don’t fit into his life that way. They’re hilarious and loud and they never stop arguing with one another, and maybe they’re all just as fucked up as Stan is, but they make him feel like that’s—okay. Like the world will keep turning anyway. The way it did even after the seven of them finally tore Its heart out and left Its corpse to rot in the sewers far below, the horror of what they’d seen and what they’d done slowly fading as they stepped back out into the sunlight.</p><p>“Fuck,” Richie had murmured, when they were all sitting in the quarry letting the blood rinse out of their hair. He’d blinked behind his water-speckled glasses and looked away, as if at something far off in the distance, and said, “We’re not kids anymore.” Stan had known, without having to ask, what he really meant.</p><p>In the months after Derry, all of them keeping in touch via their group chat and taking turns visiting one another on long weekends, Stan had to contend with a few new things. Not just the nightmares, either, or the therapy he started to help deal with them. It was Richie’s texts at all hours of the day, with the most random conversation starters—what vegetables were officially considered hipster vegetables; a list of novelty condoms he’d bought online ranked from best to worst; how someday he wanted to go on a pilgrimage to the last Blockbuster standing, somewhere in Oregon. The way Richie’s eyes shone mischievously even over Facetime, just before he opened his mouth to make a terrible joke.</p><p>What it felt like to look at someone you loved quietly once, long ago, and realize that maybe you love them now. Stan had looked at it like he was holding it in his hands, the whole tangled, wrecked, wet mess of it, impossible to tidy up and tuck into a box; and thought, <em>well, what am I supposed to do with this?</em></p><p>Throw it away entirely, he’d thought; pretend it never existed. But as it turned out, he hadn’t had to do that at all.</p><p>(“Just so you know, I don’t think I’m very good at, like, capital-R Romance stuff,” Richie had said.</p><p>“Good,” Stan had replied, his voice surprisingly calm in spite of how his hands were trembling. “Because I think I’m too old and tired for the capital-R Romance stuff.”</p><p>“Oh.” Richie swallowed visibly and nodded, blinking behind his glasses. “Right. Cool. So you want—so we can just be like, bros then.”</p><p>Stan rolled his eyes and reached up to gently tuck a stray curl of hair behind Richie’s ear. “No, you idiot, not like bros,” he said, and then he pushed himself up on his toes to kiss him.)</p><p> </p><p>And now it’s summer again, and Stan is deep in his spreadsheets while Richie is busy writing a comedy-drama pilot—the two of them spending far too many long nights on their laptops in Stan’s living room. (Richie likes to get up and pace and run all his dialogue by Stan, and Stan pushes food and tea into Richie’s hands while patiently listening and reminding him about things like plot.) Richie is currently in talks with producers, so last week he had to fly to LA, and he won’t be back until next week.</p><p>“I’m sorry I’m gonna miss your birthday,” Richie had told him while he was packing his suitcase, even after Stan had said he didn’t mind, that it wasn’t like it was a thing he still really celebrated. “You’re getting so much belated birthday sex when I get back, I promise.”</p><p>“The best gift you could give me <em>is </em>one that is also a gift for you,” Stan agreed dryly, handing Richie another Konmari-rolled shirt.</p><p>“Exactamundo,” Richie said as he stuffed the rolled-up shirt into the suitcase, somewhat defeating the purpose. Watching him made Stan’s chest hurt in a way that he was faintly aware had nothing to do with improper clothes folding. “’Kay. I think that’s everything.”</p><p>Stan shifted over and sat squarely on the suitcase so Richie could close it up. “And how do you feel?” he asked.</p><p>Richie pulled a face. It had become an inside joke between them; Richie’s therapist had previously informed him that he was, in fact, terrible at talking about his feelings, and Richie had complained to Stan, “It’s not like I get a lot of practice, it’s not like people go around asking me how I feel on a regular basis,” and Stan had replied simply, “Okay, I’ll ask you then.” Since then, he’s been asking Richie “and how do you feel?” at random times—while they’re going over Richie’s taxes on the phone with their shared Google doc, or taking out the trash, or selecting a wine at the nice deli downtown. (Nine times out of ten, Richie answers “horny” without missing a beat, but Stan figures practice makes perfect.)</p><p>Reaching around, Richie tugged at the suitcase zipper and pulled until his hand bumped against Stan’s leg. “I feel nauseous,” he muttered, his fingers brushing across Stan’s knee. “And like they’re gonna figure out eventually that I’m a hack.”</p><p>“That’s called impostor syndrome,” Stan said, his hand curling loosely around Richie’s wrist in response. “There’s nothing for them to figure out, because you’re not a hack. I've seen inside your head, remember? It’s genuine leather Trashmouths all the way down.”</p><p>The corners of Richie’s eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Oh, well, if the smartest guy in the room is saying it, must be true, huh?”</p><p>“Exactamundo,” Stan replied, swinging his legs to the side and knocking Richie’s hand away to zip the suitcase shut.</p><p>With Richie gone, tonight is looking to be a quiet birthday evening for Stan. Alone in the apartment, he rearranges his bookcase and fixes himself dinner, and then he goes online to check his email, only to find Facebook notifications from the other Losers. Bill’s sent Stan an embarrassingly long and heartfelt message, while Mike’s unearthed an old photo of the two of them from high school, laughing while attempting to wedge into a single letterman jacket with one of each of their arms through each armhole, their other arms around each other’s waists. Bev took a little video of herself in the yard, singing for him while playing the ukelele she recently started teaching herself on, and at the end of the video Ben pops up in the background, waving his gardening trowel and yelling “hey Stan! Love you, buddy!” Eddie’s greeting is blessedly normal and brief, albeit followed immediately by a link to an article about drought warnings in Georgia and the increased risk of E. coli and salmonella infections, which is so Eddie that Stan laughs out loud.</p><p>A warm wave of fondness washing over him, Stan messages them back—<em>thanks guys, love and miss you all too—</em>and then he settles on the sofa with his new book and tries not to look at his phone on the coffee table. It’s 5 pm in LA, he tells himself. They’re probably wrapping up the last meeting of the day, or going out for drinks, so it’d be rude to bother him for no reason. Stan opens his book and starts to read, before realizing he’s been reading the foreword over and over for the past ten minutes and not absorbing a single sentence.</p><p>And then his phone blares with the ringtone Richie specifically set for himself (the <em>Space Jam</em> theme, much to Stan’s initial dismay). “What ho, what ho,” Richie says heartily when Stan picks up.</p><p>At the sound of Richie’s voice, Stan feels something untwist in his chest. He leans back into the sofa, grinning. “How’s the weather, old chum?”</p><p>“Hotter than Prince Charles’ ballsack, but that’s not important. I just wanted to say happy birthday to my favorite forty-one-year-old nerd!”</p><p>“Thanks, Rich. For calling me a nerd and for reminding me exactly how old I am. That’s exactly what every guy loves to hear.”</p><p>“Oh, good, I was worried it was gonna be awkward or something. Hey, I hope you start going gray this year, I think you’d make a really hot silver fox. Do you think you could <em>try </em>going gray? For me? Pretty please?”</p><p>“I am going to kill you,” Stan says calmly, tucking the throw pillow back into place next to him.</p><p>Richie just cackles. “So what wild, wild birthday activities are going on in the Uris household tonight?”</p><p>“Well, I had a wild, wild mushroom risotto, and I am now reading a perfectly thrilling history book about the Age of Sail.”</p><p>“Back up, Staniel—did you say mushrooms? You had the gall, the balls, the wherewithal, to do <em>shrooms </em>without <em>me?”</em></p><p>“Mm, you missed out on sixty whole grams of class A chanterelle. Triple-A chanterelle. Is there a grade for mushrooms like there is for weed?”</p><p>“You know, I’m totally impressed you even know how they grade weed. Have you been holding out on me with all your stories from college? Was ‘President of the University Ornothological Society’ code for something else all along?”</p><p>Stan rolls his eyes. “Did you have more meetings today? How’s it going?”</p><p>“Uh, yeah, I just got out of one! And it’s going good,” Richie says, his tone turning offhand and breezy. “Or at least they don’t find me so annoying that they’re not gonna throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at me.”</p><p>“Stop,” Stan says, and the word comes out softer than he intended. He swallows. “You have a great idea, and you’re doing great, and I’m—I’m proud of you. For going out there, and for putting so much of yourself into making something. It’s...there’s nothing wrong with you being proud of that too, you know?”</p><p>“Oh. Well, uh. Thanks,” Richie says, small, halting syllables—and for a second it feels oddly like daylight, like they’re standing there having peeled the curtains back on each other a little too far, and now they’re both trying to look away.</p><p>Stan opens his mouth to say something, anything lighter, but then he hears a brief wave of voices on Richie’s end, and what sounds like Richie fumbling with the phone. “Oh, shit. Hey, I think I gotta go, but if you’ve got nothin’ else to do tonight, there’s a new bird documentary on Netflix you might wanna watch? I added it to the list for you.”</p><p>“That—sounds nice, yeah. Thank you,” Stan says, feeling off-balance all of a sudden but not knowing how to pull himself back up. So instead of pulling, he pushes Richie instead and says firmly, “Okay, go on, get out of here. Enjoy your strip club night or whatever it is you need to do to get a pilot greenlit in Hollywood.”</p><p>“Yeah, I’ll forward you all the Instagram Stories of me looking super bored while I stick the dollar bills down the stripper’s underwear, just so you don’t forget I’m gay as hell,” Richie laughs. “Later, Standrew! Hope you're not jerking off too hard without me around. Mwah.”</p><p>“Oh, don’t worry, without you here, I’m already monopolizing your razor to shave my palms with,” Stan replies, deadpan, and is rewarded with one final laugh from Richie just before he hangs up.</p><p>Pushing his glasses up, Stan rubs his eyes with one hand and lets his breath out slow. Then he turns his phone facedown on the coffee table and sits back and reads an actual chapter from his book, and then he gets up to run the dishwasher and wipes down the counters—and then he walks around the apartment looking for something to dust, except he definitely dusted yesterday so there’s nothing dusty left. Failing that, he makes himself a mug of tea, and then he brings the mug back to the sofa and sips half-heartedly at it until it goes from hot to tepid. And then he realizes that the restless, empty feeling he has is that he misses Richie, for no big reason other than Richie isn’t here.</p><p>You’re being ridiculous, Stan thinks to himself out on the balcony, the night air muggy and weighted around him. A year ago, he hadn’t even remembered that Richie <em>existed.</em> As it is, Richie only lives with him a fraction of the time, joking about Stan’s place being his favorite timeshare—he still has his own apartment on the Lower East Side, and travels fairly often for gigs or for work. Stan never minded it; he genuinely likes that they can have healthy space from each other, and that he can still get time to be home alone. Which is why it doesn’t make sense, that he feels this way now.</p><p>So Stan decides to tell himself it’s because he’s overtired from the week and that he just needs a better distraction, and that’s when he remembers the documentary Richie mentioned. He rarely uses Netflix unless Richie wants a movie night, but now he reheats his tea and turns the TV on. Checking the list, Stan sees the new addition called <em>Feathered Frenzies</em> at the top, which seems to be a documentary about unusual bird mating rituals.</p><p>And then his eyes flicker down to the credits, and that’s when he sees <em>Narrated by Rich Tozier. </em>“Oh, come on,” Stan says out loud, but he’s already smiling.</p><p>The documentary begins with a montage of close-up shots of different birds—a black sicklebill swaying slowly to display his bright blue flank feathers; a golden-collared manikin cleaning up the forest floor. Stan takes a moment to appreciate the high-definition quality of the footage, and then the narration begins.</p><p>“Bird sex,” Richie’s voice says solemnly. Stan snorts. “It may last only a second, but as you’re about to discover, it is anything but boring. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the animal kingdom’s wackiest, most colorful and elaborate mating rituals—beginning with one that takes place deep in the montane rainforests of central New Guinea...”</p><p>As the flame bowerbird begins his display, Stan suddenly remembers the first time he invited Richie to watch a nature documentary with him. Richie had joked so much about it being a snoozefest that he’d actually made them both bingo cards for it, to keep things interesting. “It’s a versus mode for our viewing experience!” he’d said proudly, handing over the five by five grid he’d scrawled on a sheet of copier paper, which included items like <em>random cut to a shot of a sunrise for no fucking reason </em>and <em>SLOW MOTION HUMMINGBIRD WING FLAP, WE GET IT ALREADY! </em></p><p>In the end, though, Richie hadn’t found the documentary boring in the least. He’d even let Stan win the bingo game, and he’d had more than a few ideas for Stan’s prize afterwards that had made the ridiculousness of it all more than worth it. For some reason, remembering this now creates a hard lump in Stan’s throat, and he blinks a few times until the screen comes back into focus.</p><p>“The Gentoo penguin, on the other hand,” Richie’s voice says, as the camera sweeps across the Antarctic waters towards the icy shore where the penguin colony lives, “is one bird who’s not looking for any side chicks. During the mating season, the male Gentoo penguin presents a courtship gift of pebbles to the female, which they then immediately use to build their nest together. Ha, makes you wonder why all the jokes about lesbians and U-Hauls exist.”</p><p>Reaching for his phone, Stan opens his texts to Richie. <em>Was David Attenborough out sick?</em> he types. <em>Morgan Freeman</em> <em>off filming </em>The Vatican Has Fallen?</p><p><em>“COME ON AND SLAM! AND WELCOME TO THE JAM!” </em>his phone responds loudly. Stan almost drops it before managing to answer.</p><p>“Surprise! Do you like it?” Richie sounds excited and a little shy at the same time.</p><p>“Are you kidding? It’s knocking my socks off,” Stan laughs, shaking his head. “When did you even do this? I know your schedule better than <em>you </em>know your schedule.”</p><p>“That time I said I was gonna be in the booth for a couple days doing VA for the new Lego Movie? Yeah, I wasn’t doing the Lego Movie.” From the sound of his voice, Richie is clearly grinning, and also slightly out of breath from walking. “I told Greg I really wanted to expand my repertoire, so he got these guys to let me send in a sample recording, and voila! To be honest, I think the fact that I can pronounce the word <em>penguin </em>better than Benedict Cumberbatch gave me a real edge.”</p><p>Stan feels a deep, odd pang. “And you did this because...”</p><p>“Because it’s about weird-ass birds fucking, how could I not?” Richie chuckles. “And also because I thought you’d like it. I thought it could be like, my gift to you.”</p><p>“That’s...” Stan thinks with quiet desperation that he needs to sit down, then realizes he’s already sitting down, and closes his eyes. “Thank you. I mean it, I love it. This is...I think it’s the nicest surprise anyone’s ever given me.”</p><p>“Oh, baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Surprise num—<em>Jesus motherfuck,” </em>Richie swears suddenly, and Stan definitely hears something fall over in the hallway outside with a loud clatter. “Fuck. This suitcase never stays up. Well,” Richie says, “this is gonna be anticlimactic, but—surprise number two.”</p><p>Stan’s already throwing open the door. “What the fuck,” he says.</p><p>Richie is standing in the hall and picking his suitcase up off the floor, his jacket half-falling off his shoulders. As soon as he sees Stan, he straightens up excitedly and flings his arms wide, causing the suitcase to topple over again. “Producer meetings ended way early, so I moved my flight up,” he says, beaming. “Honey, I’m ho—“ His words are cut off as Stan barrels gently into him, and Richie slowly lowers his arms until they’re wrapped around Stan’s back.</p><p>An hour later, Stan is back on the sofa having restarted the documentary from the beginning, but this time comfortably sitting hip-to-hip with a freshly-showered Richie. “After fledging, the Laysan albatross leaves home to live the sweet life out on the open ocean, mostly just chilling and eating fish,” narrator-Richie is saying. “Then, after three to five years, it returns to its nesting colony to do one very important thing—get footloose.”</p><p>“Oh, wait, this one’s my favorite,” Richie-next-to-him says, lifting his chin. “You know about these guys?”</p><p>“Yeah, I think so,” Stan says. “They mostly live in Hawaii. Albatrosses generally have pretty long lifespans, but the oldest wild nesting bird is a Laysan albatross. She’s at least sixty years old now, if I remember correctly.” He watches for a moment as the albatrosses gather on the banks of the atoll. “You know, their plumage is more gull-like than anything. See the wings and tail there?”</p><p>“Buddy, if I ever ran into a seagull this big, I’d drop dead of a fucking brain aneurysm on the spot. Did you know their wingspan is like, eighty inches? That’s over six feet. That’s longer than Eddie’s entire <em>body.”</em></p><p>“I’m telling Eddie you still use him as a unit of measurement.”</p><p>“Pfft, I can do that myself,” Richie says, pulling out his phone. He fires off a message in the group chat, then laughs and tilts the screen towards Stan to show him Eddie’s response that reads <em>there’s a bird that’s fucking WHAT? </em>Stan laughs aloud and settles deeper into the sofa cushions.</p><p>Narrator-Richie continues, “The albatrosses start showing off their moves in the atoll’s hottest nightclub scene, practicing their dances in large groups called leks. Over the next couple of years, they’ll begin to break off into smaller and smaller groups, until they’re drawn to the bird with the sexiest struts and beak snaps. Laysan albatrosses mate for life, and each pair has a dance sequence that’s unique to just the two of them.”</p><p>Stan tilts his head against Richie’s shoulder, and Richie shifts slightly to let Stan fit better into his side. “If you’re scared of them, why are they your favorites?” Stan asks.</p><p>“You know me, I live for the thrill,” Richie replies, and Stan feels his shoulders shaking with barely-suppressed laughter. “But I dunno, I guess it’s just cool. The dancing thing.”</p><p>Stan considers. “Yeah, it is.” On the screen, two albatrosses have locked beaks and are nipping at each other somewhat violently. “Well, this looks vaguely familiar,” he says dryly.</p><p>Richie makes a scoffing noise. “Please, like you don’t enjoy a sloppy makeout session every once in a while.”</p><p>Stan tips his head back to look at Richie, raising an eyebrow. “Did I say I didn’t?”</p><p>Richie grins. “Nice.”   </p><p>“To us humans, the courtship behavior of the white-fronted parrot might be a little harder to swallow,” narrator-Richie’s voice says, over a clip of two parrots tenderly touching beaks. “The male throws up into the female’s mouth, which she welcomes gladly—an aphrodisiac appetizer that gets her fired up for the main event.”</p><p>“Okay, for the record, <em>this,</em> I would not enjoy,” Stan says.</p><p>Richie laughs again. “Of all the things I’ve ever fantasized about putting in your mouth, I promise my vomit isn’t very high up on the list.” His chin is resting on the top of Stan’s head now, and he lowers it so he can nudge his nose into Stan’s hair.</p><p>Stan can feel Richie breathing in and out. “Is it the shampoo?” Stan asks, yawning. “They didn’t have what we usually get, so I changed it.”</p><p>“Nah,” Richie says. “You’re just like, fluffy.” Then Richie nuzzles faintly into Stan, moving his lips from his temple down to his ear, and Stan grows very still, his breath catching in his throat, a tiny warmth rolling through the pit of his stomach.</p><p>“Rich?” Stan asks after a while, his voice barely above a croak.</p><p>Richie doesn’t answer right away; his mouth is busy and insistent at the ridge of Stan’s collarbone just underneath his shirt, his palm hot on Stan’s hip. “Yeah?” he asks finally, muzzily.</p><p>Stan pulls away, just enough to get Richie to look into his eyes, and cups the side of his face with one hand. “Take me to bed,” he says.</p><p>After, when they’re lying in the warm darkness and the soft crush of sheets, Stan turns onto his back and gazes up at the ceiling. Richie is on his side, curled loosely around Stan like an open parenthesis. “Do you remember when we used to go on those drives?” Stan muses. “In high school?”</p><p>Richie wrinkles his nose. “Uh, yeah. You always wanted to be the one driving, you never let me take you anywhere.”</p><p>“Because getting in your car made me <em>nervous.”</em> Stan throws his hands up. “And you would regularly do things like leave pizza boxes in the backseat, with pizza still <em>in</em> them.”</p><p>“They’re called emergency rations, genius,” Richie retorts. “And I always had great mixes playing.”</p><p>“The ones that had ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ five times in a row were my favorites,” Stan agrees. Then he pauses. “I was thinking we could do that again. A real road trip, I mean. When we have time, or...I don’t know, I was just thinking.”</p><p>“Hell, yeah. We could make it cross-country, even. Georgia to California and back. Drop in on all the other Losers on the way.” Richie stretches a little. “We can go to Yosemite and Big Sur, and I’ll take you to Confusion Hill in Piercy, it’s like my favorite tourist trap of all time. And we can get bad trucker food and make out in every gas station bathroom and stop by the roadside to watch the sunsets and look at all the wildlife you want.”</p><p>“Sounds perfect.” Stan rolls closer and presses a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to the underside of Richie’s jaw, his hand sliding deliberately over Richie’s waist and into the dip in his spine. Richie sighs happily, and Stan briefly wonders, not for the first time, if he’ll ever get used to this. In the beginning, it had taken them both a while to stop feeling afraid, even when they knew what they wanted. But now they’re here, in a place where Stan can touch Richie without fear; where Richie isn’t scared to touch him back, and touch him back.</p><p>Stan looks up and clicks his tongue when he sees Richie’s glasses are sitting crooked on the bridge of his nose. “Stop going to bed with your glasses on,” he says, adjusting them with one finger. “You’re going to break them one of these days.”</p><p>“Don’t care.” Richie props himself up on one elbow to look at Stan, a wide grin spread across his face. “If I take ‘em off, I can’t look at you as I’m falling asleep.”</p><p>Stan groans and lets his head drop back down. “That’s embarrassing. We’re embarrassing.”</p><p>“Yep.” Richie slings his other arm over so Stan can curl into him. “Just two disgusting old men in love.”</p><p>“Mm-hmm.” Stan pushes his forehead into Richie’s chest. “And how do you feel about that?”</p><p>Richie goes uncharacteristically quiet for a long time. “Like this still isn’t real, sometimes,” he says at last. He’s drawing small spirals between Stan’s shoulder blades with a fingertip, over and over to make him shiver. “Like you make me so stupid happy in a way I couldn’t even fucking imagine in high school, and I still don’t know that I know how to tell you that.” Then he stops. “How ‘bout you, old man? How do you feel?”</p><p>Stan thinks about all the time he spent living his perfectly curated life, convinced that it was all he ever wanted. He thinks about how now that he has his best friends back, now that he has Richie back, he feels impossibly surrounded by love—strewn around all of his tidy boxes like so much tinsel and wrapping paper, messy and torn and imperfect and bright.</p><p>He thinks of the albatrosses in their colonies; the way they circle through the crowds towards one another through the years, closer and closer, until the all the others fall away and there are only two, facing one another in preparation for a dance. A dance they’ve practiced all their lives, so that now that they’re finally ready, they can make it count.</p><p>Stan smiles into Richie’s chest, then reaches up. “Hmm. Lucky,” he says, and pulls Richie down and into their bed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(cranks elbow) man, I feel rusty as hell but at least I'm here. If you're here too--hi, I'm May, and thanks for reading! You can find me crying more about the clown movies over at @anhgryboys; I'm locked but you can shoot me a DM/follow request if you are so inclined. Cheers!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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